Pro-government analysts assess the EP elections

The result achieved by the ruling alliance of Fidesz and the Christian Democratic People’s Party (KDNP) in the European parliamentary elections “would probably have earned them a two-thirds majority” in a general election, according to analysts who spoke at a roundtable discussion organised by the Nézőpont Institute and Mandiner on Monday.

Analysts of the Center for Fundamental Rights, the Nézőpont Institute, the Századvég Foundation and the XXI. Szazad Institute agreed that Fidesz and KDNP had achieved “a very good result” considering the war, the difficult circumstances, and that they are in the middle of their term.

Sunday’s elections, they said, had proven that “Hungary is a right-wing country”.

Presenting the think-tank’s model, Nézőpont Institute director Ágoston Sámuel Mráz said that an identical outcome in a general election would have translated to 135 parliamentary seats for Fidesz-KDNP, 45 for the Party of Respect and Freedom (Tisza), 10 for the left-wing alliance comprising the Democratic Coalition (DK), the Socialist Party and Dialogue-Greens and 8 seats for the Our Homeland Movement. He said that as long as the opposition was fragmented and support for the ruling parties was as high as it is now, Fidesz-KDNP was likely to win a two-thirds majority in every election.

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Miklós Szánthó, head of the Center for Fundamental Rights, said that counting Sunday’s local elections, Hungary’s right wing stands at 16 election victories since 1990. He added that he did not see the “political earthquake in Hungary” that Péter Magyar, the deputy leader of Tisza, had spoken of after Sunday’s elections.

Márton Békés, director of the XXI. Szazad Institute, attributed Fidesz’s local election losses in some major and smaller cities to “problems at the personal level” and changes in the political mood. He also pointed out that Fidesz-KDNP had never received as many votes in an EP election as it did on Sunday.

Meanwhile, he warned of “sovereignty protection concerns” behind Tisza’s surge, arguing that it could not be ruled out that the party was being financed from abroad through “micro-donations”.

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